Upstart Falchuk eyes gubernatorial upset of the century

Independent candidates do not do well running for governor in Massachusetts.

Nor do candidates who want to start third parties.

Put them both together and the result shapes up to be a double disaster.

Except for one thing. Evan Falchuk, 44, of Newton, an entrepreneur who wants to do both, is willing to put up $2 million of his own money to make it happen.

That's a start. But it takes at least three things to get elected governor. One is money, the second is organization and the third is message. Falchuk claims he has, or will have, all three when the campaign for governor really starts.

To begin with he needs 10,000 signatures to get his name on the ballot for the November election. So does his lieutenant governor running mate Angus Jennings, 38, a town planner from Concord. That, according to Falchuk, will be no problem.

Next is to get known. The last MassINC poll had Falchuk, as expected, running well behind Republican Charlie Baker and Democrat Martha Coakley, the two frontrunners for governor, in name recognition and support.

Third is money. Falchuk, the father of three, has apparently made a lot of money in the business world, money he is willing to spend to get his message out. He served as an executive of Boston-based Best Doctors Inc., a global health company that serves some 30 million people worldwide. Members are able to get their medical diagnosis reviewed by top physicians from around the world.

Advertisement

While candidates for governor in both parties have been working on party conventions and planning strategy for upcoming primaries in September, Falchuk and Jennings have been traveling the state, stressing the fact that in Massachusetts some 53 percent of the voters belong to neither the Democrat nor the Republican Party.

These are the registered voters who are not enrolled in either party. These are the independents. Although they are eligible to vote in the party primaries. they usually do not. However they do vote in November and a candidate, Democrat or Republican, needs them to win.

Unlike other candidates running as independents, though, Falchuk is running as the candidate of the United Independent Party, a party he formed. Its aim is to reform state government, make it transparent and accountable, and change the state's politics. No doubt a tall order.

He sees his new party not as the third party in Massachusetts, but the second, replacing the rapidly diminishing Republican Party.

His appeal is directly to independents. "Your vote doesn't belong to Democrats or Republicans," he says to them. "It's yours. If you think independent, vote independent."

Falchuk believes that the voters, fed up with the current system -- where the Democrat Party controls just about everything that moves -- are ready for a nontraditional candidate. Tired of sitting on the sidelines and complaining or criticizing, Falchuk decided to do something about it. So he is running.

He may not get very far, but there are a lot of people interested in seeing a race for governor get more interesting than what the candidates of either the Democrat or Republican parties have come up with so far.

And he has ideas worth debating if gets on the ballot. "Given hard issues like our financially strapped school systems, multigenerational poverty, and needing to help out state's small businesses thrive, we just can't afford to continue down this same path using the same thinking," Falchuk said, upon his announcement.

"The majority of people say they want independent candidates with different ideas -- people who aren't an ingrained part of the established parties in Massachusetts that have been the norm for so many decades," he said.

Falchuk also wants to expand the role of the lieutenant governor -- which candidates for governor usually say -- to take advantage of Jennings' remarkable grasp of municipal and local government problems.

In an interesting aside -- and an example of politics making strange bedfellows -- are the backgrounds of Falchuk and Jennings.

Falchuk's grandfather Soloman fled Russia at the end of World War I to escape a Jewish pogrom. He landed in Cuba and then migrated to Venezuela where he started a business, making enough money to send his children to the United States for schooling.

Jennings is descended from Pilgrims who arrived in the New World aboard the Mayflower. One ancestor was a boy named Resolved White. His family arrived in Lynn in 1630 and his Breed ancestors have maintained a presence in the city to this day.

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.